The proliferation of digital cameras and scanners has created a need for more accurate and more flexible color printing. A modem digital camera can capture many millions of pixels of information in every image, and the resulting picture can rival professional quality film photography. However, the colors captured by the digital camera and displayed by a computing device must be optimally reproduced onto a print media so that an optimal image can be shared and viewed by others. Optimal images require that an accurate color reproduction workflow is supported as well as optional end user preferences. Moreover, modem color scanners are sold for less than $100, and, as a result of their low price, many households and business have purchased at least one such scanner. In a similar fashion as the digital camera, the colors captured by the scanner and displayed by the computing device must be accurately produced onto a print media for the scanning process to achieve its goal of providing an optimal copy of an original image.
Modem color printers can use a number of different technologies to produce output on print media. A color ink-jet printer uses small droplets of a few base colors, and dithers them in a pattern to produce varying colors. A color laser printer places small dots of toner, also from a few base colors, and dithers them to produce the varying colors.
A dye-sublimation printer can mix base colors in a gaseous form and then transfer the color to print media such that each unit of the image printed can be any of a wide range of colors, and no dithering is required. For this reason dye-sublimation printers often print the most accurate color, but the resolution of the image is limited by the technology. Ink-jet and laser printers can often achieve two to three times the resolution of a dye-sublimation printer.
The various color printing technologies also produce different ranges of color. The range of color that a printer is capable of producing is known as the “device gamut” of that particular printer. While the gamut varies between printers using different printing technologies, the gamut can also vary among printers using the same technology. For example, even slight variances in design among different ink-jet printers can result in different device gamuts. Similarly, whether the ink-jet uses four or six different base colors affects the device gamut. Additionally, the perception of the color in a printed color image can also vary depending upon the color, texture, and other properties of the medium upon which the image was printed. Thus, the device gamut is also influenced by the type of medium being used by the printer.
The device gamut is an important consideration in accurately transferring color images between image capture devices, such as digital cameras and color scanners, image display devices, such as a monitor or projector, and output devices, such as color printers. Because each of these devices has a different device gamut, an image may appear very different on each device, especially if the image contains colors that are outside of the device's gamut.
To facilitate the use of color images, color management techniques have been developed to ensure accurate color representation across an entire range of devices. Such color management techniques attempt to map colors outside of a device's gamut into corresponding colors within the gamut. As an initial step, a color management system must first establish a uniform definition for a color universe. Once the color universe is defined, each device can be assigned a color profile that defines the device's gamut using the previously defined color universe. By maintaining a consistent definition of a color universe, translations can be made between one device's color profile and another device's color profile. Thus, for example, the colors displayed on a monitor can be accurately translated into colors that are printed from a printer. Similarly, a given image can be printed using any number of different printers and different printing technologies, and its appearance will be as similar as possible given the limitations of the printing hardware.
Because a printer's gamut is dependent on many factors, including the characteristics of the print media being used, a new color profile is required for each different type of print media used. For example, an ink jet printer can have a different device gamut, and thus a different color profile, when it prints on plain paper as opposed to printing on glossy paper. Therefore, to ensure accurate color output, the user needs access to the color profile of the user's printer when printing on the particular media the user wishes to use. Because there exist hundreds of different types of print media that the user could purchase, the user would need access to hundreds of different color profiles one for each available media when used with the user's printer. However, many printer manufacturers include drivers for their printers with the operating system so that any consumer can plug any printer into a computing device and achieve printing functionality with a minimum of effort. A number of restrictions prevent each printer manufacturer from including hundreds of color profiles for every printer the manufacturer produces with the printer driver, including cost and distribution. Even for a small printer manufacturer, the permutation of every printer they produce with all of the media available can be hundreds of thousands of color profiles. Furthermore, even if all of these color profiles were included, it is difficult for the printer manufacturer to update the profile of a given printer when a new media is introduced. Users would be forced to download new profiles every day if each manufacturer sought to perform a complete update.
Currently, printer manufacturers provide a minimum set of color profiles with drivers for their printers. This set of color profiles can be delivered to the user with a computer-readable medium, such as a CD or floppy disk, that is included with a particular printer, downloaded from the Internet, or they can be included in the operating system for the user's computing device. The printer driver is then forced to select among this minimum set to find a color profile that most closely resembles a new media which the user is seeking to use. Often complicating the process is the fact that users generally know very little about the colorimetric properties of the media they purchase, and cannot, therefore, provide appropriate input to facilitate the driver's task of identifying the optimal color profile for the given media.
Similarly, the manufacturers of print media face a similar problem in attempting to provide the user access to color profiles for many different printers when used with a particular print media. The problem is especially prevalent when a print media manufacturer develops a new advanced print media which requires a significantly different color profile when used with any printer. In such a circumstance, most users will resort to allowing the printer driver to select from among the provided color profiles, resulting in output that does not fully exploit the colorimetric properties of new print media, and thereby resulting in a poor user experience.
Together with color profiles, print media manufacturers often seek to distribute other media properties, such as templates or other similar page layout information to avoid forcing the user to set up the proper layout or other relevant options. For example, print media can contain predefined sections, such as labels, or cards, which are designed to be separated after printing. A page containing many such predefined sections cannot be easily used by an average computer user given only the controls provided by the user's favorite word processing or graphics program. Once again, without access to such other media properties, the user is unable to easily exploit the full capabilities of the print media, resulting in a poor user experience.